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FAA Instrument rating prep software recommendation ?


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Just recently got my EASA instrument rating, yeah. :)

Have my FAA license based on my EASA PPL, now I need to do the FAA theoretical exam in the US to legally be able to fly my N-reg Ovation outside my home country.

Any recommendation for an Instrument rating prep software I should/could use ? 

Heard of GLEIM or ASA, found some info on the web about DAUNTLESS and SHEPPARD but obviously have no clue which vendor I should use.

Any experience or recommendation ?

Thanks Graf

Edited by Graf_Aviator
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16 minutes ago, Graf_Aviator said:

Just recently got my EASA instrument rating, yeah. :)

Have my FAA license based on my EASA PPL, now I need to do the FAA theoretical exam in the US to legally be able to fly my N-reg Ovation outside my home country.

Any recommendation for an Instrument rating prep software I should/could use ? 

Heard of GLEIM or ASA, found some info on the web about DAUNTLESS and SHEPPARD but obviously have no clue which vendor I should use.

Any experience or recommendation ?

Thanks Graf

Sheppard will teach you the test questions but not much else.  But that might be good.

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I used King and so have some of the guys that work for me.  We have all passed with high scores.  The classes are old and outdated but seem to marry well with the FAA test.  Most of the younger guys we work with coming from the big university flight programs seem to use Shepard.  

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I used a combo of Sheppard Air and Sportys IFR, as well as just watching a bunch of free videos on YT. Flight Insight has a ton of free stuff that is really well done: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWCnp9tjvIPfgCAysvaUdcqqqdd4VhICb

I think you need to do the ground school first before doing Sheppard because you really need to understand the info before you can start to memorize things. If you follow the process you will do well.

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I used sportys, king, etc. sportys is very nice and kings is still good. I tried others (Machados is very complete if you want to go beyond the test and is very good, Pilot Institute - was not a fan of there’s). I found King gave me what I was looking for based on how I learn best. I also looked for lifetime access too as I keep up my training often.

-Don

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I have used Gleim for my Private, instrument, and commercial written tests. My scores on these tests were 96, 100, and 100%. They are excellent in that they organize/split all the material and test questions into fairly granular categories. This allows the user to study relatively small buckets of tests questions (~20 questions) all in the same bucket all at the same time rather than all 700 or 800 questions together at the same time. Their books are useful but all you need is the software. The software is web based, so you can use it with an iPhone, iPad, PC, or Mac. You can only use it when connected to the Internet. I find their categories to be excellent, at least for me.

I recently bought Gleim FIA/FOI package for the CFI tests. Shortly after purchasing the Gleim package, a friend suggested I try Sheppard Air. Sheppard Air claims you’ll never see a question on the actual test you haven’t already seen in their software. The first thing I noticed is Gleim has a lot of questions in their software that are not in Sheppard Air. I switched to only using Sheppard Air and got 98% on the FIA test.

So, if your primary objective is to get a high score on the written test by only studying questions that could be on the test, chose Sheppard Air.

I’m taking the FOI in mid December.

Good luck.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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I used Gleim for my instrument rating and I did well on the test, but it was pretty frustrating to use. 

The Jeppesen PrepWare tools were excellent for the A&P exams and are available for Instrument Rating and other certificates as well.   They're inexpensive and the phone app is nice to just run through test questions while you're waiting for a bus or whatever.

A free tool that is really good as well, but requires some filtering to get to useful stuff, is the Quizlet app that has crowd-sourced quizzes for nearly everything.   The aviation stuff is usually put together by students in the large schools, so you just have to find the ones that are most recent and up-to-date.   They will often reflect a composite of the most recent exam experiences, school material, study material, etc.

 

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Not exclusively software, but I have found the Flightinsight and Flying like the Pros videos on YouTube helpful. Flight Insight does offer an online product.  You can preview for free.  Flying Like the Pros hasn’t posted in a long time, but their G1000 videos are excellent. 

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Thanks all for the great feedback ! Mooneyspace is awesome !!

I have looked further into the matter taking all of the recommendations into account and I will move forward with Sheppard.

@Brandt I have subscribed to the Flying like the Pros YT channel. Looks awesome. Thanks for pointing that out !

 

Happy landings, Graf

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I used King, it’s pretty good although a little corny. But if you want to ace the test, get the Gleim book after you have gone through the prep software and use it to take the sample test several times. I have gotten 100s that way on my private, instrument and commercial.

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